Fragments
by vampirepenguin
Summary: Tobi doesn't remember much. [oneshot, probably AU]


**AN:** Okay, I have no idea where this theory originated, but I can't claim credit for the Obitobi thing. It's still made of awesome. Hence, fic.

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Tobi doesn't remember much. He doesn't remember how he lost his right arm or how his face got like it is. He does remember that his name isn't really Tobi, but since he can't remember what it's supposed to be, Tobi is as good as anything, he thinks.

Tobi has vague flickering images in his head that he supposes are from Before, if only because he doesn't know where they'd come from otherwise. There's a girl, with soft hair and sad eyes and a smile like sunlight. And there's a boy—he has soft hair, too, but Tobi can't see his eyes or his face.

He dreams about them sometimes—he knows because he wakes up and he can't remember what he was dreaming, but everything hurts.

Tobi follows the Akatsuki because he doesn't have anything else to do. Kisame-senpai helped him make the puppet-arm that replaces his lost right arm—Tobi had scavenged it from some of Sasori's cast-offs, but it had been all wrong and he'd needed more than one hand to fix it up for himself. Kisame-senpai had been laid up with a rather spectacularly broken leg at the time, and bored.

So now Tobi has a right arm.

It doesn't really bother him that he can't remember losing the original, not most days, anyway. There's no point in getting worked up about something he can't change, right? If he remembers, one day, he'll deal with it.

The snatches he does remember are frustrating, though, and it's not so strange for him to find himself wondering exactly who he was back then.

Tobi makes up stories for himself sometimes—silently, in his head so Deidara-senpai doesn't yell at him. Well, more than Deidara-senpai already yells at him. He tells himself he's the son of a daimyo, and that his father's retainers will find him one day and ask him to take over the job. He tells himself he's a farmboy, and that fits a little better. Tobi's good with animals. Or maybe he's a caravan brat, like the rowdy kids they pass sometimes on the roads, tagging along after the slow-moving wagons. Maybe he got run over by a wagon and that's why he's like he is, why he can't remember.

They found him in Stone Country, he remembers Kisame-senpai telling him, right near the end of the Third Ninja War.

That doesn't really fit, but Tobi's okay with being Tobi-of-the-Stone. Even if he doesn't think it's right.

There had been a hitai-ate with him, Kisame-senpai told him, but it had been too battered and mangled to decipher what symbol it bore. So he's Tobi-of-the-Stone, because that's where they found him.

Deidara-senpai tells him no Stone-nin he knows would be caught dead with as few _doton _jutsus as Tobi can master, and Deidara-senpai would know.

Tobi's good with fire, though, and he wonders if maybe that's where he's from. Fire Country.

He never gets sent that way, though, and he wonders if maybe that's on purpose. But that doesn't make any sense either, 'cos Itachi-sama gets sent to the Leaf plenty and they _know _he was Leaf.

Tobi sort of resents that, but he's nowhere near stupid enough to pick a fight with Itachi-sama. Itachi-sama is scary—he even frightens the half-memories into hiding, leaving only the niggling impression that Tobi should recognize him.

Which makes even less sense than anything else, because Tobi _does _recognize him—it's Itachi-sama, after all, and Tobi has to know who to steer clear of.

Tobi doesn't remember much, and what he does remember is of little use. Sometimes, he'll think he sees the girl with the sad eyes and the smile out of the corner of his eye, only to turn and see it isn't her. He wonders if she's dead, but knows with a funny sort of certainty that she isn't.

He wonders who she is, if she remembers him, if she knows his name. His real name, and not Tobi-of-the-Stone.

He likes to think she does, that if he ever were to find her, somehow, she would know him. Tell him his name. Tell him who he is, where he's from, if he has family. Bring him home.

That's Tobi's new daydream.

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**Endnotes:** Okay, this theory is crack and I'm not afraid to admit it. But I do like to play around with it - Obito's such a woobie, and Tobi needs some love. Together, they kick ass. Dysfunctionally.


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